Using Stem Cell Therapy To Help Alleviate The Pains of Osteoarthritis

Stem Cell Therapy At Revive MD Could Help To Ease Your Joint Pain

Here at Revive MD, our team aims to reduce the symptoms of osteoarthritis like pain, stiffness and loss of strength in the joints. After your treatment, our goal is to keep in contact with you so we can guide you to achieve the best results and get you moving comfortably again. Patient care and knowledge is what is expected of us and it is exactly what you would expect to gain from our expertise.

In 1968 the first bone marrow transplant was performed. And in 2004, Osteoarthritis treatments began on horses and dogs. This may be your first contact with “biological treatments” but they have been in progress for a very long time.

What is Osteoarthritis?

No more are the days when we used to think osteoarthritis was all about the loss of cartilage. We now know osteoarthritis starts due to loss of cartilage and this leads to inflammation throughout the entire joint. Inflammation is the problem, it is destructive to all the tissues in your joint.

• The cartilage (cushioning) in between the bones starts to wear away, cartilage is mainly avascular, meaning it has no blood supply. Without blood supply repairs do not happen. Since your cartilage cannot repair itself, inflammation starts to occur and this causes pain in your joints.
• Ongoing or “chronic” inflammation damages all the surrounding tissues and structures of the joint including veins, nerves, synovial membrane, ligaments, cartilage inclusive of muscles and tendons.
• Blood vessels inside and around the joints will become inflamed. Blood vessels carry nutrients, when the vessels are inflamed, delivery of nutrients becomes very poor. Inflamed blood vessels start to leak. This extra fluid leaking out of the blood vessels causes oedema. This oedema is felt as stiffness.
• Inflammation builds, causing the synovial membrane & bursal sacks to become inflamed.
• When the synovial membrane becomes inflamed, it starts to produce excess amounts of poor quality lubrication (synovial fluid) lubrication. This is excess fluid does not help movement, it is of poor quality and it leads to swelling, therefore restricting.
• Pain restricts movement and decreased movement means the muscle will waste away. Strong muscles provide stability and help to protect the joint.
• Tendon’s attach the muscle to bone. Due to lack of movement they start to degenerate, leading to tendonitis (inflamed and painful tendons).
• The nerve endings around the bone and general joint structure will become inflamed. This is what causes your night pains or resting pain.
• Your body may try to repair the areas where cartilage has been lost, it will fail. This can cause small bony formations known as osteophytes. These osteophytes can cause severe pain if they press against tendons or nerves.
• Ongoing impact on your bones may cause bone oedema (swelling). Walking with joints that suffer from bone oedema can cause significant pain.
• The lack of cartilage and ongoing movement in your joint allows the bones to rub against each other. This leads to bone sclerosis (hardening) of the bone.
• Once you have lost all the cartilage in the centre of the joint and your bones are rubbing on each other. Each time you walk, you will grind down the surface of the bone like polishing a stone.
• Eventually the polished bone will look like ivory; smooth, hard and slippery. This dense bone has no nerve endings and no feeling, just like the enamel on your teeth. When the dentist drills through the enamel then you feel everything. For some people being bone on bone is not painful.
• The lack of movement along with the ongoing wear and tear of the joint may push you to a point where you have no choice but to replace your joints.

Your body has the potential to heal itself,

Stem cell therapy is just a helping hand.

Inflammation is the root cause of the problem, if we resolve the inflammation and reinstate healthy blood vessels, your joints go into a state where repairs can be carried out.

Our Stem Cell Treatment

At Revive MD, our treatment can target and resolve the inflammation that is causing you pain and repair damage.

• When the blood vessels are no longer inflamed, nutrient delivery can return to normal, the blood vessels stop leaking and this will reduce the swelling, oedema and stiffness.
• Your body makes lubrication for your joints (synovial fluid). When the inflammation is reduced it can continue making good quality lubricant inside your joints. Thereby, allowing free flowing movement within the joint.
• Nerve pain will go as the nerve inflammation settles. Sensations such as burning, tingling and numbness are symptoms of nerve pain.
• Bone oedema will resolve as repairs are carried out, it does take longer.

• The cartilage, yes this can re-grow.

Our Treatment Continues With You

As your inflammation reduces, you will start moving better. You may notice your muscles are weaker than usual. It is possible to reverse this and gain strength very quickly since muscles have very good blood supply. However, if they gain strength too quickly your tendons may not keep up because their blood supply is not as good. You will notice this when you feel your pain “shifts”. At this stage, you may develop tendonitis.  It is important to note that this is not a side effect of the treatment. It is simply your joint trying to get back to normal, but it is encountering “growing pains”.

The pain of osteoarthritis can resolve in 2 to 6 weeks but tendonitis can take up to two years for some patients. The more degenerate your tendons are before treatment the longer they will take to heal.

Don’t forget, we are here to assist. We can also use your body to help resolve tendonitis quickly, and without the need for any surgery.

Can Revive MD Help Osteoarthritis?

Treatment by Revive MD has the potential to carry out repairs, as indicated below:

1. Target and fight off inflammation (reduce the pain you have)
2. Increase the productivity of synovial fluid (increase lubrication of your joints)
3. Differentiate into specific tissue types and repair the damaged layer of cartilage as well as connective tissue such as tendons, muscles and ligaments
4. Resolve nerve related pain such as burning, tingling and numbness

What if I am Bone on Bone?

When you lose all the cartilage in the centre of the joint bone is exposed. This treatment will stimulate the cartilage and it will start to regrow from the edges in the same way that skin around the edge of an ulcer will grow and eventually spread across the gap to close the defect. In the knee joint if the hole is small it can close. If the hole is large, the cartilage still grows inward towards the centre of the hole. However, as we walk, run, exercise, we are performing movements that can grind that new cartilage away. Even if you are not able to close the hole, you are able to remove all the inflammation, swelling and oedema, this is how your pain will go. The surface of the bone will become sclerosed and smooth like ivory, this hard sclerosed bone will have no nerve endings just like the enamel on your teeth so there will be no feeling. Like water on a marble floor, ivory with oil, polished bone with good quality synovial fluid is very slippery.

So you still have the ability to become pain free and completely mobile, even if you are bone on bone in your joints.

Does Stem Cell Therapy Work for Knees?

Yes! Stem Cell Therapy  is a suitable treatment for knee pain, inflammation and cartilage loss caused by osteoarthritis. We have seen great results for many other patients. The knee joint is the most common joint treated here at Revive MD and it does respond very well.

Which joints can be treated?

At Revive MD, we have used stem cell therapy on just about every joint in the body. Unfortunately osteoarthritis can cause wear and tear in more than one joint, which is why it is not uncommon for us to treat multiple joints at the same time. Below are some of the joints we have treated which have shown very good improvement:

• Fingers and toes, including thumb joints
• Wrists
• Shoulders
• Spine (the neck down to the lower back)
• Hips
• Knees
• Ankles
• Feet

Does Weight and Age Make a Difference?

Your body fat does not age as rapidly as some of the other parts of your body, such as bone marrow. There have been several different studies confirming this. While your weight may not affect your response to this treatment, you will need to keep in mind that it could impact wear and tear. The correlation with obesity has been observed for knees, hips and other weight bearing joints in addition to non-weight bearing joints. This means the loss of body fat is more closely related to symptom relief than the loss of actual weight induced physical stress. Some studies suggest that there may be a metabolic link to body fat as opposed to just mechanical loading.

What is the Success Rate of the Treatment?

Our patients generally notice improvements to their pain levels, joint function and quality of life. You will need to keep in mind that no two people are exactly alike and results vary from one patient to the next.

The results we see at Revive MD are life changing for some of our patients. We pride ourselves in being experts in stem cell but also having an excellent team to provide service to all of our patients. .

It is important to remember every patient will respond differently to these treatments.

Treating Tears to Cartilage and Ligaments?

It can be very common for osteoarthritis sufferers to have two conditions present, such as cartilage tears (labrum, meniscus, etc.) or ligament tears.

The knees, most commonly treated joint.

Stem cell therapy is great for knee pain, inflammation and cartilage loss caused by osteoarthritis. We have seen excellent results for many of our patients who suffer from this type of pain. The knee joint is the most common joint treated here at Revive MD and it does respond very well.

Hip Joint, does the biological treatment work?

We have observed significant improvements in the arthritic hips of our patients. We can see hip joint results that are comparable to the results we see in knees.

Spine Related Arthritis, is a biological treatment suitable?

Spine related arthritis refers to osteoarthritis in the spine, inclusive of the neck down to your lower back. We have observed that the spine does respond to the treatment, but patients need to keep in mind that in many cases the results will be far greater with multiple treatments. We do have the option to offer multiple treatments for you.

Osteoarthritis in the Shoulder? Can my biological process be used here?

Whether it affects one shoulder or both, arthritis of the shoulder can be a particularly painful condition. Revive MD stem cell therapy has shown great promise for shoulder arthritis.  We’ve seen extremely successful results for shoulders.

Smaller joints such as the Fingers, Toes and Thumbs?

Interestingly, these smaller joints can cause big issues in limiting a patient’s quality of life. Handling objects, writing, walking and even leaning can become debilitating. Stem cell approaches apply very well for these smaller joints.

Call Today to schedule your free consultation with Revive MD! Let us help you get your life back!